Banned in 2009 for its controversial activities, Islamist outfit Hizb-ut Tahrir has now been integrating Myanmar’s Rohingya refugees, staying in the coastal district, under its umbrella to strengthen the group and keep its key players off the law enforcers’ radar.
Police have found that members of the banned organisation, divided in several groups, are contacting the Muslim refugees, who enter the country illegally on a regular basis, and engaging them in its activities by providing them with housing, job and educational assistance.
Latest, Kotwali police detained seven activists of the group from Andorkilla Shahi Jame Mosjid area on Friday when they attempted to bring out a procession. One of them was Mobarak Hossain, 24, who stays at the Letha Refugee Camp in Teknaf of Cox’s Bazar.
Police say apart from Mobarak, many other Rohingyas are being trapped by Hizb-ut Tahrir these days.
During initial interrogation, Mobarak said he had entered the country about a year ago paying Tk500 to the border guards of both Bangladesh and Myanmar. One Moinuddin, student of a madrasa at Hathazari in Chittagong, took him to a students’ mess at the upazila’s Forer Bari area after a week of his arrival.
Moinuddin got him admitted to the madrasa where he is now studying. But Mobarak says he wanted to study science. Moinuddin later helped him to take admission at Memory Computers in the port city’s Chawkbazar area eight months ago.
Moinuddin also engaged Mobarak with the activities of Hizb-ut Tahrir saying that its activities meant “fight for establishing Islam.”
“Like Mobarak, 10 other Rohingyas are being nurtured by Moinuddin,” Shah Mohammad Abdur Rouf, assistant commissioner of Kotwali circle, told the Dhaka Tribune. “Police are trying to arrest all the members of the banned group who are using the Myanmar refugees for its illegal activities,” he said.
A top-ranked police official, seeking anonymity, told the Dhaka Tribune that around 1,000 Rohingyas had already joined Hizb-ut Tahrir in exchange of different benefits. “The group’s high command uses them to establish its controversial ideology amongst the people,” the official said.
AKM Mohiuddin, officer-in-charge of Kotwali police station, said the activists arrested previously were highly educated and fully brainwashed about the group’s activities. So they did not give any mentionable information during interrogation.
CMP Additional Commissioner (crime and operation) Banaz Kumar Majumder said they were looking into the matter seriously as the police had already found information that the Rohingyas were getting involved with the banned group directly and indirectly.
According to its website, an Islamic scholar named Sheikh Muhammad Takiuddin al-Nabani of Jerusalem formed Hizb-ut Tahrir in 1953. It has branches in 87 countries including Bangladesh.
The government banned the organisation on September 24, 2009 as its objectives are contradictory with the country’s constitution.
According to sources in Hizb-ut Tahrir and the police, about 10,000 members of the organisation are working actively across the country.
Even though the group is not blamed for committing any subversive activities elsewhere in the country – like what the JMB and the Huji do, its members often publish anti-state, communal and militant statements through posters, leaflets and Jihadi books.